Brazil and Colombia have blown up 19 illegal gold mining operations in the Amazon rainforest. Colombia’s armed forces said the mines were producing about $1.5 million worth of the rare metal every month and polluting the rainforest’s rivers with mercury, reported the BBC and Reuters. The unlawful activity was producing 50.71 pounds of gold a […]
Colombia was the most dangerous nation in 2019 to be an environmental activist and experts suspect that conditions will only get worse. More than 100 human rights defenders were killed across the Latin country in 2019. Community leaders, teachers and park rangers are among the more than 50 human rights defenders and community leaders additionally […]
By Genevieve Belmaker and Joseph Charpentier Throughout 2018, forests continued to be threatened and destroyed. From the Amazon, to the Congo Basin, to the Mekong Delta and scores of places in between—journalists reporting for Mongabay filed hundreds of stories about the world’s forests. Although the significance of any one story is difficult to gauge in […]
New University of Maryland data published by Global Forest Watch (GFW) Wednesday revealed 2017 as the second-worst year on record for tropical tree cover loss, a GFW blog announced. Tropical tree cover decreased by an area the size of Bangladesh—a total of 39 million acres. That amounts to 40 football fields worth of trees cut […]
An oil spill of approximately 550 barrels (23,100 gallons) has killed more than 2,400 fish, birds and reptiles near the city of Barrancabermeja, Colombia, RCN Radio reported. Oil started spilling from the Lizama 158 oil field in early March and spread down 15 miles of the Lizama river and 12.4 miles of the Sogamoso river. […]